I have had the benefit of viewing both versions of this film. Various “adult” scenes were censored, which accounts for some of the differences between The Hour of the Pigand The Advocate. A summary of The Hour of the Pig’s plot can also be accessed here.

It is a period-piece set in fifteenth century France, with a mixture of bawdiness, interpersonal drama, racial prejudice, criminal mystery, and social intrigue. It tells the story of a lawyer who defends a pig accused of murdering a child. Does that sound weird to you? Perhaps it does simply because most of us do not know a lot about medieval and Renaissance European history. So, it is not uncommon for people today to express incredulity when they hear that animals were once prosecuted in Europe for crimes in both civil and ecclesiastical court cases. The feeling is probably expressed with words like, “the law is an ass” or “how could they have been so stupid to put animals on trial?”

However, as English historian Darren Oldridgereminds us in Strange Histories(2007: 4), “when we have little understanding of the beliefs of another society, many of the acts that routinely occur within it may strike us as absurd.”

Our present-day incredulity really is a reflection on how ignorant and prejudiced most of us happen to be about the Middle Ages, than it reflects any deep understanding about the era of the animal law trials.

It is one thing for us today to pose the moral question, “should animals have ever been prosecuted for crimes”? It is entirely another matter to take a superficial glance at the past and then pour scorn on an era that one does not even begin to properly understand.

1. FILM’S PLOT

The Advocate/The Hour of the Pigis set in AD 1452 in a rural village named Abbéville, in the feudal county of Ponthieu, in northwestern France. The central character is a lawyer named Richard Courtois (played by Colin Firth) who has departed from Paris accompanied by his law-clerk named Mathieu (played by Jim Carter). Courtois was disillusioned by corruption and decadence in Paris but is also bouyant due to the Renaissance’shumanist impact on learning. He relocates to Abbéville with hopes for an idyllic life, of dispelling superstition, and of representing rural people who need justice.

After arriving in Abbéville, Courtois becomes busily engaged in representing people from a backlog of law-suits.

He is successful in his first case in obtaining an acquittal for a farmer accused of murder.

Courtois’ next case involves defending a villager named Jeannine Martin (played by Harriet Walter) who is accused of witchcraft. Courtois seems confident of securing an acquittal. In this witchcraft case the film plucks out a line of defence used in a real-life sixteenth century animal law suit.

1.11 Bartholomew Chassenée & Rats in Court

There was a case heard in 1522 before the ecclesiastical court in Autun, in the region of Burgundy, France where Bartholomew Chassenée (1480-1540) acted as counsel for rats charged with destroying the local barley-crop. Ecclesiastical courts heard cases involving undomesticated or wild animals that caused harm to communities.

There were complex theological ideas associated with the role and influence of undomesticated animals on communities. Prosecutors and advocates alike would argue the toss about possible divine or malevolent supernatural acts using animals as instruments. In the “logic” of medieval and Renaissance thought it was taken as a “given” that animals were created by God (Genesis 1). Thus when the biblical narrative was taken into account it was understood that animals had a right to exist alongside humans. There was a nascent recognition that undomesticated animals had certain kinds of “rights” conferred on them by God as creator, so the theological underpinning was based in the doctrine of creation. From the standpoint of an ecclesiastical court, animals could not be arbitrarily eradicated because the doctrine of creation had considerable bearing on the problem.

Animals, like the rats who ate the barley-crop, may have been sent by God as agents of punishment for human sinfulness. Then again, as demonology was taken as a serious reality, animals might also be unwittingly influenced by the power of the Devil for malicious and mischievous attacks. The ecclesiastical courts had to adjudicate on cases to determine if the hand of divine judgment was evident or if spiritual malevolence was apparent. It is worth noting in passing that not all ecclesiastical trials ended up in condemnatory judgments against animals. Accused species were sometimes acquitted. Much more can be said on this juridical and theological subject but that task is set aside for a different post.

Chassenée used a legal manoeuvre to explain why all rats in the afflicted diocese would need to be summoned to appear in court but then as proceedings developed he explained that their failure to answer the summons was on the grounds that a court summons is supposed to ensure the accused have a safe journey to court. The rats, he argued, had declined to attend court owing to the fact no safe passage was available due to fear of the local cat population.

1.2 Courtois Loses the Case

Courtois uses a similar manoeuvre to that of Chassenée and argues for a dismissal of charges against Jeannine bewitching mice. The court is persuaded by Courtois’ legal gambit and dismisses the specific charges involving bewitched mice.

Nevertheless, much to Courtois’ horror his client is still condemned as being guilty of witchcraft. Courtois evidently imagined that his argument concerning the summons for mice would yield a complete acquittal for Jeannine. Courtois’ blunder prompts his legal opponent, the prosecutor Pincheon (played by Donald Pleasence), to politely point out that he has much to learn about the provincial legal code which differs from the Parisian civil law code that he had been trained in.

At Jeannine’s execution she prophesies that a knight will come one day to the village and recompense all evil. Her prophecy is fulfilled at the very end of the story when a knight arrives, collapses, and when his armour is removed his body is carrying a contagious plague.

The main law suit that occupies the rest of the story concerns a pig accused of murdering and eating a Jewish boy. It is loosely based on a trial of a sow and six piglets in 1457 at Lavegny that were accused of murdering and eating a five year old boy named Jehan Martin (note the similarity of the boy’s name with that of the woman in the film who is accused of witchcraft).

A number of sub-plots conjoin as the trial of the pig comes to the forefront. At the outset, Courtois declines to represent the pig’s owners, a brother and sister who are Moors (typecast as despised persons much like Gypsies). As intrigue swirls around the dead child and the accused pig, Courtois harbours suspicions that point to the vested interests of the local feudal power-broker the Seigneur Jehan d’Auferre (played by Nicol Williamson). The Seigneur has a daughter and a son both of whom show clear signs of mental instability. For example, the adult son derives pleasure from torturing birds.

Through a chain of events Courtois discovers there is another child corpse, and he comes to believe that there is a serial killer in the district. Courtois is convinced that the Seigneur’s son is the culprit and confronts the Seigneur. The Seigneur, who appears to be enmeshed in a cultic network of underground believers in the Gnostic Cathar heresy, acknowledges that his son is a murderer but has already dispatched him to live abroad. At the trial, the pig is exonerated as being falsely accused because a farmer (Courtois’ first client) gives testimony that it was another pig and not the one on trial.

At different times in the story, Courtois has conversations or brief encounters with Albertus the priest (Ian Holm) and with the prosecutor Pincheon (played by Donald Pleasence). Albertus maintains the surface appearance of being a pious priest but he is sceptical about village ignorance and church-based superstition, and is not averse to flouting his vows on celibacy. Pincheon is an older man who sees something of himself in Courtois. He tells Courtois that it would be better if he went back to work in Paris. Pincheon had come many years earlier holding to similar ideals as those of Courtois but has realised that the village is far from idyllic.

After the trial of the pig is dismissed, the film draws to an end with Courtois and his clerk Mathieu in a horse-drawn carriage leaving Abbéville. The plague-infected knight arrives in the village thus fulfilling the prophecy of the condemned witch Jeannine Martin.

The overall direction given to the actors has yielded, as might be expected, some strong character acting from Colin Firth, Ian Holm, Donald Pleasance, Nicol Wiliamson, Harriet Walters, and Michael Gough, and other cast members. Courtois has a keen mind accompanied by an arrogant attitude towards people of lower class standing and lesser intelligence. There is incipient corruption in the institutions of the village and dreadful ethical compromises made by the characters when forced into the horns of a dilemma. There is some good attention to the period costumes, the music, and creating an atmosphere that brims with brutality, intrigue, obvious poor hygiene, and sheer bawdy humour. The story is unlikely to have an enduring broad appeal although fans of particular actors will doubtless enjoy their performances, and it will be of interest for those who have a vested interest in historical period-pieces and in animal rights issues. Nevertheless, some discernment is needed about modern attitudes of incredulity toward the period of the film and of the story’s accuracy concerning technical points about the trials.

An effort has been made by the screenplay writer to name characters that fits the period in which the film is set. Mathieu (Jim Carter’s character) is the French name for Matthew. Other names point us to or remind us of some well-known figures in different periods of medieval history. Mention has already been made of the accused witch Jeannine Martin and the real-life case in 1457 of the boy Jehan Martin who was killed by the sow.

The magistrate is named Boniface which reminds us of the Wessex-born eighth century missionary to the Germans, St. Boniface(c. 680-754). The priest played by Ian Holm is named Albertus, and the thirteenth century teacher of the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas was St. Albertus Magnus(Albert the Great) (c.1206-1280).

In both versions, the film’s pre-credit opens with the villagers gathered together to witness the hanging of a man and an ass that have been prosecuted and condemned for bestiality. On the scaffold stands the condemned man named Roger Landrier and the ass, the executioner, Albertus the priest (Ian Holm), and Magistrate Boniface (Michael Gough). Boniface reads out the criminal sentence of the civil court.

Just before the execution occurs a monk rushes forward calling for a stay of proceedings and hands a written petition to Boniface. The petitioners’ plea is that the ass was an innocent and unwilling victim. Boniface reads the petition, and then announces that the ass is not guilty and may be released. The villagers applaud. The priest Albertus gives the last rites and the condemned man Landrier is hung. Perhaps some viewers of the film interpret this scene as gallows humour that presumably is meant to typify the remainder of the story.

The pre-credit village scene may reflect a trial (but not the same outcome) at Montpellier in 1565 that involved a man and mule condemned for bestiality.

4. TWO VERSIONS OF THE PRE-CREDIT TEXT

After this scene there is a slight difference between the two versions of the movie. In The Hour of the Pig there is a brief written caption for the British and European audiences that simply states:

In medieval France animals were subject to the same legal processes as human beings, including trial in a court of law. This story is based on real life cases.

This succinct text is less susceptible to conveying immediate prejudicial impressions to the viewing audience about the historical period in which the story is told. Perhaps this points to film-production strategies about how the modern European audience would respond to The Hour of the Pig. Perhaps some Europeans are much more in touch with their continental history, or the concise statements simply do not require elaboration once the word “medieval” is used.

It is certainly in great contrast to the extended text contained in The Advocatewhich was distributed by Miramax for audiences in the United States of America. The Advocatepresents a scrolling text:

France – 15th Century, the dark ages …

The people were still gripped by ignorance and superstition, mortally afraid of the power of Satan, expecting God’s punishment – the plague that was sweeping Europe.

In such uncertain times the Church, the State and the Law should have been the guiding lights, but the Church was some-times as corrupt as the State.

The local Lords, the Seigneurs, ruled with cruel self-interest and justice was reciprocated by a somewhat confused legal profession.

Each region had its own laws, but all had one extraordinary provision …

Animals were subject to the same civil laws as human beings. They could be prosecuted and tried in a court of law.

Unbelievable as it may seem, all cases shown in this film are based on historical fact.

4.1 Factual Text or Propaganda?

The longer pre-credit text in The Advocateostensibly explains to the viewing audience the historical backdrop to the story. Even though the story is a piece of historical fiction the film-maker nevertheless says that the animal law cases are “based on historical fact”.

Elements from some historical cases of the prosecution of animals have assuredly been used to tell the story. However, The Advocate’spre-credit text, coupled with several other incidental elements of the story, contain historical anachronisms.

A few moments of reflection will enable us to see that the message conveyed in the pre-credit text is not a straight-forward piece of information. It sets up negative impressions for the audience to prejudge the era even before the fictitious story has been told. We do not simply have an entertaining story or even a reflective story that encourages viewers to discover a moral message learned from history.

The text carries forward to the audience an implied train of thought contrasting between “us” (today) and “them” (the fifteenth century).

Modern incredulity is embedded in the text but surfaces particularly in the last sentence of the pre-credit, “Unbelievable as it may seem, all cases shown in this film are based on historical fact.” Why should it seem “unbelievable” that animals were once prosecuted in European history, unless one is already being a tad scornful, or tacitly admitting considerable ignorance about a past era?

Moreover, it should be noted that punishment of animals via legal proceedings did not originate in the Church or in medieval Europe. Medieval and Renaissance Europe was not the only cultural context in which such trials have happened. Earlier precedents can be found in classical Greece, and other examples are found in various non-European cultures such as the ancient Near Eastern world, colonial America, India, the Congo, the Malacca of Malaysia, and the Maori of New Zealand.

Of course, most people forming the audience of the film The Advocateat the time of its release in the cinema would have had no prior historical knowledge about animals being prosecuted. So it undoubtedly would seem “unbelievable” to a largely uninformed audience.

How the audience responds to that message prompt and then to the story is another thing. Some probably share the prejudice that people in medieval times were prone to believing in all kinds of “nonsense”. There are customer video reviews on some websites where questions about the prosecution of animals are raised.

Others, it seems, have simply had a jolly old laugh by construing the motion-picture as being primarily an example of “black comedy“, that it is a form of gallows humour. Some of the bawdy elements of the story probably help to reinforce that impression of a black comedy. One can see this in comments of some customer reviews at Amazon and at the popular film-review site Rotten Tomatoes.

4.2 Edward Payson Evans’ Influence

Then there is a second layer to the incredulity that a smaller segment of the audience would mutually agree upon. Some members of the legal profession and other non-lawyer participants in animal rights causes are aware that animals were once prosecuted.

Evans’ book is clearly one of the major sources standing behind the screenplay of The Advocate.

In recent decades, animal rights lawyers, and some scholars in other disciplines, have written academic journal articles about animal law trials. As might be expected, Evans’ book is regarded as an authoritative text that they invariably turn to. Piers Bierne (1994: 28) says of the book’s status that it “occupies a pivotal role in the small English-language literature devoted to the subject.”

Evans was of Welsh extraction raised in a Presbyterian household in nineteenth century USA. He seems to have embraced some of the intellectual scepticism of his day, particularly regarding the historiography of the medieval period. For example, he translated into English the two-volume work The Life and Works of Lessing.

Evans’ critical attitude on medieval animal law suits is reflected in his vocabulary (1906:12):

The judicial prosecution of animals, resulting in their excommunication by the Church or their execution by the hangman, had its origin in the common superstition of the age.

Evans speaks of “the common superstition of the age”, and that remark is the colour filter through which the medieval world and animal trials are then interpreted.

While not all current scholarship necessarily follows all of Evans’ theoretical explanations about “why” animals were prosecuted, nevertheless his late nineteenth century sceptical incredulity endures.

4.21 Lawyers & Scholars since Evans

In the years following the release of The Advocate, legal scholarship persists with the theme that animal law suits are bizarre. Paul Schiff Berman (1994: 290) notes the “weirdness” but also tempers this with some wise caution:

It would be impossible to discover with any certainty the reasons for this seemingly irrational custom. No doubt the motivations–psychological, economic, religious–varied from community to community, and from one social class to another. Nevertheless, it would be unwise to dismiss the animal trials as the unenlightened custom of a bygone era.

Another much more recent example is in Katie Sykes’ (2011:274) essay when she introduces the subject by saying:

It is about a historical practice that seems like far-fetched fiction.

Melodie Slabbert (2004: 160) picks up the impression of the “strangeness” of animal law trials:

What appears to have been acceptable acts in these times are today seen as puzzling and bizarre. It is strange that in the case of these animal trials, guilt (both in a moral and juridical sense) appears to have been attributed to these animals … It is indeed strange that intellectuals in late medieval and early modern Europe regarded acts such as filing a suit against mice, or officially punishing pigs by the hangmen of local towns, as perfectly reasonable.

Just like Sykes’ brief comment, Slabbert’s introductory remarks in her essay points to the “strangeness” of medieval intellectuals who had deemed it “reasonable” to prosecute animals. Embedded in these quotations are thoughts that illustrate the problem raised by the historian Darren Oldridge. Animal law suits only seem “strange” to us largely because we today are hopelessly unfamiliar with the “logic” of medieval thought and society. To which it might be added that sadly fewer and fewer undergraduate students in law enrol in elective courses on jurisprudence or devote much time to the study of legal history.

4.3 The Book ofDays

It seems to be a “forgotten truth” that in the second half of the nineteenth century The Book of Days was a popular two-volume compendium of older cultural curiosities. It was compiled by Robert Chambers (1802-1871), first published in 1863 and reprinted many times.

In volume one, the entry for January 17 includes an article, “St Anthony and the Pigs: Legal Prosecutions of the Lower Animals” (pp 126-129). Chambers pointed out that animals came under different legal jurisdictions depending on whether they were domesticated or wild:

On the Continent, down to a comparatively late period, the lower animals were in all respects considered amenable to the laws. Domestic animals were tried in the common criminal courts, and their punishment on conviction was death; wild animals fell under the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts, and their punishment was banishment and death by exorcism and excommunication. (p 126)

Book of Days 1869 edition p 128.

Chambers also drew attention to Chassenée’s rat case (pp 127-128), and also to the trial of the pig in 1457. Chambers had an artist draw a scene about the pig’s trial which appears on page 128. Chambers remarks: “Our artist has endeavoured to represent this scene; but we fear that his sense of the ludicrous has incapacitated him for giving it with the due solemnity” (p 128).

As The Book of Days (1863) enjoyed wide circulation as a popular compendium, it can be inferred that some general knowledge about animal law suits was within the public domain of Britain more than two decades before Evans had his articles published in the Atlantic Monthly (1884), and over forty years before Evan’s full-length investigation was published in 1906. Evans’ scholastic scorn about the prosecution of animals in earlier times was clearly matched beforehand in the wider public domain.

It is worth keeping TheBook of Days in mind in light of the sub-title of Hampton Carson’s essay in 1917: “A little known chapter of Medieval Jurisprudence”; and again Bierne’s essay abstract (1994:27), “I address a little-known chapter in the lengthy history of crimes against (nonhuman) animals.” From 1917 to 1994 we have the same point echoed that the animal law trials are “little-known”. How out-of-touch it seems both writers are with The Book of Days, a popular nineteenth century source that recounted some animal trials! Needless to say there is greater remoteness on the part of people writing today from the primary sources written in Latin from the medieval and Renaissance eras on the subject.

4.4 Latin, Anyone?

Everyone writing today about animal trials relies on what Evans has written. Evans was an accomplished linguist and he quite rightly referred to earlier French and Latin sources. Nevertheless, I have yet to see a present-day legal scholar going back directly to the sources that Evans’ consulted. Instead current day legal discussions about the animal trials come to us mediated through the filter of Evans’ book. The lack of modern critical editions of these French and Latin primary sources being translated into English is a telling point. Thus Chassenée’s own work (A Treatise on the Excommunication of Insects; published thrice during the sixteenth century) remains to this day untranslated from the Latin.

4.5Trial numbers

It should also be kept in mind that the number of the known recorded law suits involving animals is about two hundred or so in total. This spans a very lengthy period stretching from the Middle Ages (A. D. 824 ecclesiastical court in Aosta Valley, northern Italy) right up to 1906 (civil court in Switzerland).

The figure needs to be kept in mind to avoid creating exaggerated perceptions that possibly many thousands of animals were executed by the Church in medieval times. To which it must also be kept in mind that law suits against individual animals still took place in the civil (not ecclesiastical) courts in parts of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and as noted right up to 1906 in Switzerland.

5. OLDRIDGE’S ADVICE IS VALUABLE

To the minds of almost everyone living in the centuries when animal law trials were held there was a clear societal, theological, metaphysical, and jurisprudential “logic” operating that made the trials “normative” for the times.

Of course it can be pointed out that there were a few critical eyebrows raised about prosecuting animals, one of which was the thirteenth century Dominican priest and theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274).

Here we encounter Oldridge’s fundamental point that “when we have little understanding of the beliefs of another society, many of the acts that routinely occur within it may strike us as absurd.” The era of fifteenth century France is deliberately typecast in the pre-credit text as a time when people were generally superstitious and ignorant. They were “unenlightened” which stands in contrast to how “enlightened” we must be today.

6. INCREDULITY AND IGNORANCE

The longer pre-credit text for The Advocatepresents selected morsels of information about the broad period known as the Middle Ages. However, the vocabulary used employs rhetoric to express late-twentieth century incredulity about the Middle Ages.

The first problem in The Advocate’spre-credit text is describing fifteenth century France as the “dark ages.”

The term “dark ages” probably conjures up at a popular level today images of an era characterised by superstition and ignorance and a lack of scientific knowledge. The term might reinforce a smugness on our part when comparing our “sophisticated” time with the “ignorance” and “superstition” of an earlier age.

The expression was originally coined by the Italian Cardinal Caesar Baronius in 1602 to refer to patterns of events discerned in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

Later, it became common to refer to the period spanning from the collapse of the Roman Empire until the rise of the Italian Renaissance as the “dark ages.” In other words that long era in European history spanning from the sixth century to the thirteenth century.

In terms of historiography, the “dark ages” once signified that the surviving written sources from the early Middle Ages were limited and scant. Among professional historians today, however, the term “dark ages” has been discarded, especially as a much greater depth of understanding now exists about the medieval world.

So The Advocate’spre-credit uses a term that is (a) anachronistic (b) discredited and (c) fallen out of usage among professional historians because it is not a helpful descriptive term for understanding the medieval period.

The medieval world is not allowed to speak for itself on its own terms and within its own social “logic” but rather is filtered to us through the prejudices of the film-maker. A value-judgment is made at the start of the film about the period in which the story is set, and the pre-credit message seeks to both impart and to reinforce a negative impression to the audience.

6.2 Plague as an Anachronism

The second problem in The Advocate’spre-credit concerns the plague. The pre-credit message also alludes to the fear of divine retribution via “plague”. At the close of the film a plague-infected knight arrives in the village. One could allow some leeway in that there was good reason to be fearful about outbreaks of plague, and people did interpret the plague as a sign of divine punishment.

The drawback with the pre-credit text and with the diseased knight in the story is that the year is 1452 (fifteenth century). However, the “Black Death” plague that decimated the population of Europe actually occurred one hundred years earlier in the fourteenth century and hit its peak in the years 1348-1350. Other kinds of plague broke out in different parts of Europe in the seventeenth century. Abbéville does not appear to have been affected by any known outbreaks of plague during the mid-fifteenth century.

6.3 Creative Licence & Muddled Law-Suits

According to the extra chapters on the DVD of The Advocate, the fictional lawyer Richard Courtois is based on the French jurist Bartholomew Chassenée. However, it needs to be kept clearly in mind that Chassenée was born in 1480 almost thirty years later than the story in The Advocate. Chassenée’s role as an advocate for animals involved cases heard before the ecclesiastical courts in France from 1500-1530.Aside from that anachronism, the film muddies the waters at a technical level concerning the law suits. The real case about the rats and the fictional case about Jeannine’s witchcraft were dealing with very different crimes. In other words, Chassenée’s case defending the rats was not about a law suit involving people charged with witchcraft.

Chassenée’s case was argued in an ecclesiastical court. Courtois argues cases in a civil or secular court. The film takes two different categories of historical crimes, and merges cases from two different jurisdictions (ecclesiastical and civil courts). Some creative licence is allowable for a film but we must recall that the story filters information. We are entitled to be mildly sceptical about the film’s pre-credit claim that all the cases told are “based on historical fact.” Yes, there are historical elements but the trial of Jeannine Martin is not a strictly accurate adaptation of one particular animal law trial.

7. WHAT WE DON’T UNDERSTAND WE OFTEN DEMONISE

Eric Sharpe observed in Understanding Religion(1983: 16) that “it cannot have escaped the notice of today’s educationalists that very many students no longer acknowledge the Judaeo-Christian tradition as a positive element in western society.” Sharpe recognised that all too-often people today make instant and dismissive judgments about past epochs that are little understood by those who scornfully dismiss them.

Sharpe insisted that undergraduate students must strive to genuinely understand history and religions on their own terms and in their own contexts before taking any further steps in critical analysis. He illustrated this with the reactions he often encountered among contemporary undergraduate students who had had some personal background in the Christian church:

Even the study of the Judaeo-Christian past does not absolve the student from the exercise of imaginative sympathy. When ordinary Christian students find it almost impossible to enter imaginatively into the Christianity of a hundred years ago, which they dismiss with a phrase such as ‘Victorian smugness’ or ‘imperialistic arrogance’, and decline to study more closely, is it not likely that the same difficulty will present itself magnified a thousandfold when the time comes to examine Christian origins or the Protestant reformation? One suspects in both these cases that what is being studied is less the first or the sixteenth century than the impression which each has left on the mind of the twentieth. (1983: 16-17).

Sharpe’s remarks could equally apply to the way in which today’s film-makers, lawyers and law-students should exercise great care in examining the history and the jurisprudence of Europe’s animal law trials.